Index
General
Introduction
• What is Textpander?
Thanks!
• Components
• Localizations
• Beta Testers
User Guide
Editing Snippets
• Overview
• Snippet Formats
• Special Content: Date, Time, etc.
• Choosing an Abbreviation
• Importing Snippets
Using Textpander
• Just Start Typing...
Questions & Answers
• Emergency
• Safety Issues
• Other
The Latest & Greatest
Textpander Online
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Editing Snippets
Overview

Snippet Formats
There are two different formats for snippets: Plain Text and Formatted Text, Pictures. While the former is nothing but a string of unicode characters without any style information, the latter lets you combine formatted text with any number of pictures.
When Formatted Text, Pictures snippets consist of exactly one picture, Textpander automatically switches to single-picture mode. Single-picture snippets are especially useful for applications that refuse to accept pictures from snippets that contain both formatted text and pictures. In these cases, Textpander inserts the picture in question by simulating a picture paste operation — try using both the llaugh and the wwbr abbreviations from Textpander's default configuration in Microsoft Word, and you'll notice the difference.
To insert pictures into a given snippet, paste them from your currrent clipboard or choose "Picture..." from Textpander's [+] pop-up menu just below the content input field (↑ Overview).
Special Content: Date, Time, etc.
Textpander lets you add the following kinds of special content to your snippets:
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Date and Time
You can insert the current date and time into your snippets by means of strftime-style conversion specifiers — the first two snippets in Textpander's default configuration should give you a basic idea of how this works.
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Clipboard
By adding a clipboard placeholder (%clipboard), you can have Textpander insert the current clipboard content into a snippet on expansion. Please note that only the clipboard's plain text representation will be used here. Format information will be discarded.
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Cursor Positioning
If you're a web designer, you have to type this phrase quite frequently: "<a href=""></a>". Creating a snippet which abbreviates <a href=""></a> with ahref or any other abbreviation will already make things easier, but you'll still have to move your cursor back in between the quotation marks to enter a URL. That's exactly what Textpander can do automatically for you. Just put a "Position cursor here" specifier (%|) somewhere in your text snippet. Or add the appropriate number of left-arrow keystroke specifiers (%<) to the end of your snippet's content. In the present example's case, you will end up with <a href="%|"></a> or <a href=""></a>%<%<%<%<%<%< , depending on the strategy you have chosen. Please note that Textpander will only recognize the first "Position cursor here" specifier in your snippet. Cursor keystroke specifiers (left, up, right, or down) are ignored when a "Position cursor here" specifier is found. Moreover, Textpander will only recognize cursor keystroke specifiers at the very end of your snippet.
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To insert date/time conversion specifiers and cursor positioning specifiers into a given snippet, choose the appropriate entries from Textpander's [+] pop-up menu just below the content input field (↑ Overview).
Choosing an Abbreviation
A good abbreviation is...
• short
• easy to remember
• unlikely to be typed by accident
• unique
There are many different ways of meeting these criteria. Duplicating an abbreviation's first character is one way to make it unlikely to be typed by accident. Since Textpander never expands typed characters in the middle of a word, this works perfectly in most of the cases. For instance, li would be a bad abbreviation for lorem ipsum , as quite a lot of words — such as "life", "like", etc. — start with "li". Enter the duplicated first character: lli is still reasonably short, you don't have to move your hands more often than when typing li , and there are hardly any words that start with "lli".
As far as the "unique" criterion is concerned, things partially depend on your settings. With Textpander's default settings, the abbreviations lli and llid would interfere with each other. In fact, you would never get to enter llid , because Textpander would activate as soon as you've typed lli . You can, however, configure Textpander to only Expand automatically when... a delimiter character has been typed after an abbreviation in the Preferences section of Textpander's preference pane. (Delimiter characters are [Space], [Tab], and [Return].) Once you've done that, lli [Space] and llid [Space] no longer interfere with each other.
The Expand automatically when... a delimiter character has been typed after an abbreviation setting also makes finding an abbreviation that is unlikely to be typed by accident easier: If the word "li" does not exist in your language, choosing li as an abbreviation won't cause any problems.
Having settled for an abbreviation, you'll want to think about how the abbreviation is supposed to work. Textpander offers three modes:
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Require Matching Cases
Example: If a given snippet's content was lorem ipsum , and if its abbreviation was lli , then...
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typing lli (exact match) would make Textpander insert lorem ipsum .
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typing lLi , LLI , LLi , lLI , LlI , Lli , or llI (anything else) would not trigger Textpander.
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Ignore Case
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typing lli , lLi , LLI , LLi , lLI , LlI , Lli , or llI (any case variation) would make Textpander insert lorem ipsum .
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Adapt Content
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typing LLI (all capitals) would make Textpander insert LOREM IPSUM .
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typing LLi , LlI , or Lli (leading capital) would make Textpander insert Lorem ipsum .
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typing lli , lLi , lLI , or llI (anything else) would make Textpander insert lorem ipsum .
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The Adapt Content mode is particularly useful for phrases that may appear at the beginning or in the middle of a sentence.
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Importing Snippets
In addition to its own file format, Textpander is capable of reading data from TypeIt4Me and Typinator. To import snippets, choose Import... from Textpander's [pin-wheel] pop-up menu just below the snippets list (↑ Overview) or drag files directly into the snippets list.
While TypeIt4Me's snippets files are wherever you put them, Typinator's snippets file is usually located at "/Users/(your user directory)/Library/Preferences/com.macility.typinator.plist".
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